a day at the airport

I am currently sitting in United terminal C-26 at Dulles airport in D.C., right next to this one little lady dressed in her blue-striped oxford shirt and navy blue United vest. She's the Boarding Pass Lady. You know, the person who’s job consists of sliding a long piece of paper into a machine which then spits out a tiny remnant for you to shove into your pocket, only to forget all about it until it becomes a crumpled little ball after the next wash? Yup, that’s her.

Rather than simply gathering and mindlessly squeezing boarding passes into their metal repository, she calls out boarding groups with a glorious zeal not seen outside of Scientologists urged to jump off couches during tapings of syndicated daytime talk shows. Some passengers seem slow in their approach to the gate, causing her to scream at them through the overhead microphone to, "hurry up, the flight is leaving!"

A man at the counter, approximately 20 feet away from Boarding Pass Lady, asks a desk clerk whether he is at the right gate. Before the desk clerk can respond, Boarding Pass Lady screams into the overhead microphone, "flight 785 or flight 760?" Met with no response, her pleas become more fervent. “FLIGHT 785 OR 760?!? HELLLLLLO! FLIGHT 785 or 760!?!?!” The man at the counter looks over at her confused, and then quietly says, “760.” Boarding pass lady yells, “C5, not this gate.” She points excitedly towards the opposite end of the building and exclaims “C5! NOT HERE!” The man gives her an awkward stare and begins his walk down the terminal as the desk clerk simply looks defeated. Boarding Pass Lady smiles… another job well done!

I am also sitting next to a man in an orange vest who obviously should be working somewhere else at the airport, but instead has been chatting on his cell phone for the past 25 minutes. Perhaps the fact that United terminal C-26 is the furthest possible area from any place that a man in an orange vest should be is precisely the reason he is here. He glances over at me throughout the call, a little unhappy that I chose his personal phone booth to sit near, despite a rather sparse waiting area (in my defense, the only power outlet for my laptop happens to be in this exact same row of seats).

After concluding his call, he folds his cell phone and shoves it into his pants pocket. He doesn’t, however, make a move to get up. Instead he slowly surveys the scene, and then reclines more deeply in his chair. Another 15 to 20 minutes elapses before he finally lifts himself off his blue chair, and wanders slowly down the terminal.

All of this left me pondering, which is worse? The woman who cares a tad bit too much about a job that really shouldn’t be given so much care? Or the man who cheats the system and works his hardest to ensure that he does absolutely no work at all? Maybe the answer truly is one or the other, but I like to think that there is no good and bad in this game. Whether you are a lady who takes her job much too seriously or a man who doesn’t take his job seriously enough, they both do what they have to do to get themselves through the day. Isn’t that all we can really hope for in the end?

On second thought, that orange vest guy is a complete lazy ass jerk. Fuck him.